What Is This Word?...Continued from page 2

There may be somebody here this morning who is aware of that puzzlement, that incomprehension, that sense of a word being spoken which seems as though it ought to mean something but which remains opaque to you.  If that’s where you are, the good news is that along with this theme of incomprehension and rejection there goes the parallel theme of people hearing and receiving Jesus’ words, believing them and discovering, as he says, that they are spirit and life (6.63), breathing into the dry, dead fabric of our being and producing new life, new birth, new creation.  ‘As many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God’s children, who were born not of human will or flesh, but of God’.  ‘If you abide in my words, you will know the truth and the truth shall set you free’ (8.31f.).  ‘If anyone keeps my words, that person will never see death’ (8.51).  ‘You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you’ (15.3).  Don’t imagine that the world divides naturally into those who can understand what Jesus is saying that those who can’t.  By ourselves, we none of us can.  Jesus is born into a world where everyone is deaf and blind to him and what he’s saying; but some, in fear and trembling, allow his words to challenge, rescue, heal and transform them.  That is what’s on offer at Christmas; not a better focussed religion for those who already like that sort of thing, but a Word which is incomprehensible in our language but which, when we learn to hear, understand and believe it, will transform our whole selves with its judgment and mercy.

Article excerpted from the sermon, What is this Word?(2005), originally appearing on N.T.Wrightpage.com; Used by Permission of the Bishop of Durham, Dr N. T. Wright